An Excerpt From "The Very First Summer of Rebecca Emmons" Part Five

An excerpt From "The Very First Summer of Rebecca Emmons," a novel by Anthony Rosania.

Rose Princesses would never have breasts small as hers, far too small for a girl that age, another cause for heartache and some derision. Of course, she knew the boys who were the cream of the crop would not date her at all, unless she put out, and she had put out to a point, loneliness being a terrible thing.

She might even put out for those boys back there playing baseball; indeed, had she noticed them at all, looked at them, she might have remembered one or two. One in the mouth was one in the mouth, regardless of color, after all.

Boy, she thought, they must have been desperate to go out with me. She half-laughed. She found nothing wrong with thinking it, that she had had sex with a lot of boys. But she hadn't. She didn't do that. Yet, the thought said, no guilt. And the thought patted the sidewalk along with her steps.

She walked faster, the voices behind her were mean and shingled the air. They had no centrality to them. There was a great deal of angry pain and unaware dissolution in them, and she started running.

She knew they would not follow and was somewhat sad about that. Their voices did keep up with her, at least in her claustrophobic mouse-going-'round the merry-go-round brain. The voices sounded louder and deeper, as though they were ten years or more older than they really were. The voices like switchblades racing after her. Voices like old anger that were now to be taken up again, first time, personally, from them to her.

And their laughter scalded her. She wished Miss Sommers were with her here, wished the woman could have leaned all that tallness down to those boys, and tell them a thing or two about life, tell them that in the real world. That this kind of stuff just doesn't go, in the real world; we have to respect others before others can respect us.

And they would probably knife her to death, but the girl would get away, she was untouchable, disculpable, now invisible again. She could not be expected to interfere or save Miss Sommers' life or anything like that.

She didn't want Miss Sommers hurt or dead.

After all, Miss Sommers had been the first adult the 18-year-old girl had had sex with.

To see Miss Sommers defending her, Rebecca thought, all noble-like, would have been exciting. How chivalrous, having her honor defended, and to think she was the soul and sanctity of rationality and sanity.

Miss Sommers had especially liked to taste her. To taste the juice. To feel the nubby hardness, which she herself had caused. To stroke it with her withering, womanly hand. To make the girl die a hundred little deaths, stirring from the depths. Something no boy had accomplished with this girl, formerly of this Earth.

She had turned the corner, literally and figuratively, and the boys were out of her sight though she knew they were saying sexual things about her. She wished she had had the courage to look at them, to see if one or more of them had been with her at some time or other. She hadn't put out to them often, however, she reassured herself.

She remembered she had, somehow or other, been dared to, had--- Yes, that was it, been a little woozy with drink at the time, though she didn't remember anything else about it, who put her up to it, if she had won something, and for that matter, she didn't remember any of the boys she had had sex with. Which was hardly fair. She did doubt, however, that they were always that much bigger than white boys.

The parabola of heat laced that crazy thought. Look at me, for God's sake, that's crazy. I don't even know how to do it. Miss Sommers scared the hell out of me when she came on to me. When she said what she did.